Austrian-Bavarian Expat meet-up on a Sydney rooftop terrace

Just before flying to Australia I saw that an old friend of mine also happened to be in Sydney for work. Natalie and me had been sharing desk, lunch break and our bosses’ mood swings while we were both interns at BMW Group, back in 2006. We agreed to meet up close to Circular Quay and it soon turned out that my Austrian friend Maggie would meet some girls for her Sydney farewell that same night.

As soon as Natalie and me had caught up on our lives and adventures since BMW – over a very experimental and spicy Mexican dinner – we joined the Austrian girls on the Glenhouse roof top terrace. What a location! Very hidden in the Rocks but once you’ve found it the views over Sydney harbour will take your breath away. But what really kept my breath away for the whole evening was the crazy laughing going.

Since all of us live out of our Bavarian or Austrian comfort zones for a while (whether in Sydney, New Zealand, Hong Kong or Thailand) we all had encountered some travel disasters on our ways. Once I had shared my luggage story from Auckland even more embarrassing travel stories emerged, such as trying to to get your vintage bike on an airplane from Singapore to Zurich, being upgraded to Business Class and finding it rather hard to order a glass of champagne in style when you’re wearing track pants, crying your heart out over tragic movies and pretending you have something in your eye, getting drunk on an airplane while being on a work trip…. the list could go on for ages.

I don’t do any of these stories justice by bluntly writing them down like this, but just imagine five cackling girls acting these stories out pantomime style and their best mix of German & English with Austrian accent (because they lost their ability to speak their mother tongue properly). You’re probably not laughing as hard as I am at the moment but I know – whenever I will be sad or down I just need to recall that evening to burst into laughter again. Seriously, jetzt!